Citizens United created a corporate right no natural person can enjoy

Evidence

Where for Maitland, Machen, Dewey, and almost all other theorists of corporate personhood, the corporation is a legal person that cannot perform many of the acts given to “natural” persons—getting married, voting in elections, running for office, and so on—the Citizens United ruling effectively created a right given to corporate persons that cannot be enjoyed by individuals beyond the ultrarich: unlimited spending to influence elections. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 384

In the wake of a series of Supreme Court decisions, beginning with the 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which found that corporations possess a right to free speech in the form of unlimited corporate spending on election campaigns, American public life has seemingly privileged corporate rights and abilities over those of so-called “natural” persons. In the Citizens United ruling, there is an explicit acknowledgment that corporate entities possess the same rights as “natural” persons, though these rights may be expressed differently and at different scales. Or, in the pragmatist terms of Dewey, the problem with the Citizens United decisions is not in the inherent ascription of “personhood” to a corporation. Although this link cannot be justified through the “originalist” arguments popular among some members of the Supreme Court, corporations have long been “persons” in the eyes of the law, and, as Dewey shows, this “personhood” can both restrict and privilege the actions of a corporation. The problem is that Citizens United, by equating corporate spending with the exercise of speech, created a “right” to be enjoyed by corporate persons but not by “natural” persons. Where for Maitland, Machen, Dewey, and almost all other theorists of corporate personhood, the corporation is a legal person that cannot perform many of the acts given to “natural” persons—getting married, voting in elections, running for office, and so on—the Citizens United ruling effectively created a right given to corporate persons that cannot be enjoyed by individuals beyond the ultrarich: unlimited spending to influence elections. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 384

Categorization

• XREF: Dewey’s pragmatist framing of corporate personhood is cited — connects to how the author structures the legal argument. — connects to: Citizens United redefines influence as following the money and super PACS as independent speech — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 345; Citizens United’s logical strain reveals a new set of meanings being crafted — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 345
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory: A Marxist…, 384